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Boiling Poultry

A boiled turkey stuffed with a mixture of grated bread, oysters, lemon peel, butter, eggs, and cream, garnished with barberries and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boiling Poultry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Let the turkey rest for 3-4 days after killing before dressing.

  2. Pluck the turkey, draw it at the rump, cut off the legs, and tie the ends of the thighs into the body with string.

  3. Remove the head and neck.

Make the stuffing

  1. In a bowl, mix the grated bread, chopped oysters, lemon peel, salt, pepper, nutmeg, butter, eggs, and cream to make a light stuffing.

  2. Stuff the turkey's craw with part of the mixture and form the rest into balls.

  3. Sew up the turkey and dredge it with flour.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the turkey in a kettle of cold water, cover it, and bring to a boil, skimming off any scum.

  2. Once boiling, reduce heat and let it simmer slowly for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and let it sit covered to finish cooking in the steam.

  4. Serve the turkey with oyster sauce poured over it and the force-meat balls arranged around it.

  5. Garnish with barberries and lemon.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Forms the main body of the dish and is cooked whole by gentle boiling.
Penny loaf
Bread crumbs absorb moisture and butter and eggs, giving the stuffing a light, soft texture.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to the stuffing and the oyster sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, keeping the stuffing tender and moist.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing mixture together and help it set when cooked.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the stuffing mixture.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly after bringing to a boil. Once boiling, reducing the heat to a gentle simmer keeps the turkey and the egg-bound stuffing from toughening. Rough boiling can make the meat dry and the stuffing break up.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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